Cincinnati Blacks In Technology: 'Agile Methodology, What's the Big Deal?'

BDPA hosts ‘Cincinnati Blacks In Technology’ to collaborate with the vibrant community of like-minded technology professionals of color in our city. The doors are wide open for those folks who passionate about all things technical. Our meetups encourage fun, socializing and high level talks on a variety of technology topics. IT recruiters and IT job seekers are both welcome!

Like many other traditional brick-and-mortar companies, The Kroger Co. has sought ways to improve its ability to delivery software solutions better, faster, and more cheaply as a means to stay ahead of its competition. Along the way, Kroger had cultivated a deeply rooted waterfall development process, due to the constraints of their more complex project environments. As a result, Kroger has struggled in its transformation to adopt Agile practices.

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Attendees will learn about the company’s experiences in transitioning from a Waterfall approach to become a more Agile organization – with full knowledge that a unilateral adoption of Agile practices would not be effective in this environment. Kroger’s experience illustrates how a hybrid approach (one that brings together a combination of traditional and agile practices) that focuses on key business drivers and a pragmatic agile adoption framework can reap tangible results within the context of an existing waterfall process. Also, attendees will get details of the agile pilot that was conducted to validate the benefits of using disciplined agile practices within Kroger. The discussion will focus on the methodical, real-world Agile approach enabled Kroger to accelerate its software delivery cycles by 18.5% while using less than 20% of the projected budget – all while significantly increasing product owner and customer satisfaction.

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Our ‘real-world’ presentation will be made by our guest speaker, Gerald Smith. Gerald is a senior manager with Sogeti and an IT professional with a number of important certifications in program management and agile transformation. He has been a hiring manager looking over resumes and job seekers during his management career at Kroger and Luxottica Retail. Gerald is also a long-time BDPA supporter who recently accepted a leadership post as the BDPA Cincinnati chapter vice president of member services.

BDPA is blessed to have Gerald sharing his expertise and wisdom with BDPA members at this meetup. Anyone … regardless of race or color … interested in tech is welcome!